Heard on Animal Planet: "Polar bears are amazingly _stealthful_."

Wed Sep 14 14:33:51 UTC 2011

The speaker was just being poetic.  And "Obs. [Obscure?] rare."  See OED.

Joel

At 9/14/2011 12:33 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Local/regional dialect in place of _stealthy_, like BE _boresome_
> > instead of _boring_? Or just a slip of the tongue? Youneverknow.
>
>Maybe we can blame the peddlers of the silly _healthy_ vs. _healthful_
>distinction.
>
>--bgz
>
>--
>Ben Zimmer
>http://benzimmer.com/
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org